"Neoconservative" is the wrong label

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"Neoconservatives" are not conservative.  It is a gross misnomer.  

A synonym for conservative is modest.  The best, truest conservatives are modest people, fiscally prudent and socially private.  The opposite of conservative is radical.  Radicals get in your face and insist on wholesale change immediately.  Conservatives, by contrast, do not declare revolutions.  They are evolutionary, moderate, slow changers.  

Militarily, conservative means careful.  Reluctant.  Surgical.  Pragmatic.

Radicals, by contrast, are reformers.  Unbending idealists.  The gravest, most monstrous sins of history have been committed by radicals.  

Eisenhower, Reagan, and the first Bush were militarily conservative.  Somebody please bring them back.  America, currently in the grip of radicals, is in the darkest night of its history.    

The currently reigning, radical, swashbuckling American military school (and its apologists) deserves a label.  But it's not any kind of conservative.  

7/31/06